You tell us: What should we focus on in 2013?

Looking back, 2012 was a year of victories for USAction, both large and small. And as progressives, we have so much to be proud of.

On November 6th we re-elected President Obama and made the Democratic Senate more progressive with champions like Tammy Baldwin, Sherrod Brown and Elizabeth Warren. We fought back attempts to cut Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security benefits in the fiscal showdown. We changed the conversation on wasteful Pentagon spending. And we raised taxes on the top 1%, the first time in decades that we’ve overcome the GOP’s rigid anti-tax, anti-government extremism. And we couldn’t have done it without people like you, so thank you.

Now, the showdown continues. And we’ll need your support each step of the way. As we gear up for new challenges, we need your input on what’s important to you. Help shape the campaigns our network of over 500,000 activists work on every day by filling out our quick member survey. Question 1 is below, just click your answer to get started.

Question 1 – Here are the big campaigns from last year that we’re still working on. Which ONE campaign do you think we should spend the MOST time and effort on this year?

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All them plus more than a few more. Still, if most North Americans were somehow to get onto the same page with regard to reduced carbon emissions and other sorts of atmospheric pollution, the percentages would still be against us. The Chinese are not going to give up on their newly found industrial wealth. Neither will anybody else. It would absolutely be beneficial if civilization were to transition to a more sustainable ways of life with solar power and locally grown chemically free genetically unaltered food, networking lovingly with humane neighbors, with full high speed Internet for all. But if anyone can lay out a plausible scenario how the nearly seven billion people embedded in the economic system can transition into this future, I haven’t read it yet. When you consider the amount of weaponry this species has access to, and considering how hair trigger many of the tempers of US citizens are, the chance of avoiding a mass mutual massacre are, in my opinion, slim.

How does one remove and replace gas powered vehicles the world over? The jobs and very survival of a large percentage of people’s livelihoods depend on motorized transportation. Where would the obsolete motor vehicles be dismantled and recycled? That could be a source of livelihood, of jobs, if tearing cars and motorcycles apart is your idea of a good time, a rewarding career — especially since computer robots could do it cheaper and more efficiently, that is if enough electricity could be generated without burning carbon rich pollutant stuff or, perhaps, nuclear fusion.

Who will organize all this, and under what authority? If someone objected to their work assignment or living arrangement, would there be coercion? Who would make the decisions? Who would do the coercing? What would keep power from being abused?

This is literally too difficult. Choosing just ONE of these critical agendas over the others is not the way to go. What’s needed is a comprehensive approach.
The filthy Koch brothers, and ALEC, and the US Chamber of Commerce, and all of those other economic and ecological terrorists don’t concentrate on destroying only ONE part of our republic at a time, so why should Progressives limit themselves to ONE single area of defense?

I can’t choose between the bottom three and see those as equally important. We need real tax reform based on ability to pat and simplicity. We also need to neutralize the military-industrial complex both to save money and lives. And we need campaign finance reform that provides a substantial degree of public financing of elections so as to diminish the influence of corporations and special interests in the outcome.

I think all of the issues listed are important,but I want to see us average workers paid a living wage and I believe this country is doomed if we do not start slowing down the widening of the income inequality!Some of these ceos are being given WAY 2 much by their boards of directors while workers are losing jobs,having their wages frozen or have their benefits degraded!